:P (books 47 & 48)

[derien]

47) "Mawdryn Undead" - Peter Grimwade Turlough is kind of a weak jerk, but I never could help liking him - I guess because he advances during his time as a companion and seems to become a better person. So my affection for him as I was reading this is based on my future affection for him after "Enlightenment," which I guess is not really fair.

48) "Like Water For Chocolate" - Laura Esquirel Which must have been the reason I couldn't remember the end of the movie. WTF was the stupid bint thinking? A poor example for women reading this as 'romance.' I may elaborate as to exactly why I think that in comments, later - if you're interested and I don't get around to it poke me.

I'm eating the rest of the cornbread and wish I'd got my shit together to make more - hopefully tomorrow I will. Ran out of time to even make toast with going to the gym and having a bath after. And calling the management company to make sure they know it's 65 degrees in here (hasn't warmed up more than a degree even with the sun and all) and the pharmacy to make sure they still have my patches (they do) and the dr.'s office to ask if they will switch me from patches to pills since I keep screwing up the patches, and also to ask where the heck the results from my Lyme disease test are (I'm probably fine if they haven't notified me.)

ETA! Warning! Comments now contain big-time spoilers for "Like Water For Chocolate."

Comments

[kryptyd.livejournal.com]

Ohh, what's wrong the the romance? I am interested in the fecked up things people (particularly women) have come to consider romantic.

Big time spoilers

[derien.livejournal.com]

This is going to be totally spoilery, unfortunately, because who a person ends up with at the end of a book is the thing. But I'll try to avoid telling you too much about how they get there.

Tita is in love with Pedro. "When he looks at her she feels as though she's dough dropped in boiling oil" - or something like that. Anyway, when he's under pressure the things she finds admirable about him - how upright and decent he acts - seem to fall apart and he turns into a whining baby. But she looooves him!

Meanwhile she's got this other amazing guy, John, who remains gentle and adoring no matter what happens, and she agrees to marry him because Pedro is in fact married to her sister. Pedro forces himself upon her while John is away fetching his Aunt to come to their wedding. And of course she likes it after all, right? *eyeroll* And John still wants to marry her when he comes back after she tells him - he's forgiving, he's patient, he's understanding.

To complicate matters, her sister, Rosauria (who is Pedro's wife) has a little girl and Tita wants to stay near the little girl in order to make sure Rosauria doesn't mistreat her as their mother mistreated Tita.

I don't know, I just felt that John was by far the better man, that Pedro was an ineffectual froth-head who she 'loved' based on his looks or something - it wasn't ever clear to me why she found him so hot.

And then at the end she and Pedro have sex and die of happiness. Even though it's not the first time they've had sex or anything, but somehow it's the first time they've felt as though they could be completely together with nothing else distracting them, or something. They go up in a shower of fireworks and it's all very mystical and pretty, but basically she's traded lust and childish indulgence in subterfuge for a good, calm, stable and adult relationship. In my opinion.

I'm such a jerk, I know.